Pace
by Nixa Jane
Summary: Tag to Crichton Kicks. Sikozu underestimates them. She shouldn't.


**Pace**

Note: This is really more of a missing scene than a tag--it takes place right before, and up to, where Crichton tells Sikozu she might not want to stay with them near the end of the episode.

* * *

When he walked into the Pilot's chamber, wearing black leather pants, that cloth black t-shirt and well-shaved, she almost did not recognize him. Her eyes followed him as he moved towards the Pilot, jumping up on the console and sliding to the other side. He placed the palm of his hand against the Pilot's cheek and spoke to her softly. 

"Nice, huh?" the Nebari whispered, as she appeared suddenly behind her. "Well, you can go ahead and forget it. You can't have him."

Sikozu turned to sneer at her. "I do not _want_ him."

"Well that's good," Chiana whispered. "Because if you hurt him--I'll kill you. Slow_ly_. One re-attachable limb at a time. Get it?"

Behind them, Rygel laughed, and the sound grated on Sikozu's nerves. "She's serious, you know," he said. "All things considered, she might just kill you anyway."

The Nebari laughed and then grinned at her, baring her teeth in an evil little smirk. Sikozu glared back at her, smart enough to be nervous, but not foolish enough to let it show.

With another laugh, Chiana got to her feet and moved over to Crichton, jumping up behind him and throwing her arms around his neck. Sikozu rolled her eyes. She was on a ship of insane people. If they actually found a way off of this dead ship, she would have to find somewhere else to go.

She sighed. Not that there was anywhere else to go. Not anymore.

She glanced up again, towards Crichton. He had a pulse pistol on his thigh, and he looked just like a Sebecean, but he did not speak Sebecean, and when she had asked, he had said he was something called human.

He certainly looked like a Peacekeeper, she decided. Not that Peacekeeper was that much of a step up from insane inferior species. And the Nebari was worrisome. She was obviously insane as well, perhaps a side effect of this nomad existence they led. It would not happen to her.

The Hynerian did not worry her. He was manageable, but the others, they were unpredictable--the one advantage of madness. Perhaps that was what had kept them alive.

She didn't like unpredictable. She liked schematics, statistics--facts. She liked nothing about them.

They were her only allies at the moment, however, and she would need to stay with them until it was convenient to leave. If nothing else, they seemed lucky. They had defeated the Grudeks, after all. But she didn't trust luck. You never knew when it was going to run out.

She caught snatches of Crichton's conversation with the Pilot. She was offering to take them away from here. Sikozu almost snorted. As though this dead ship could get twenty metras without falling apart at the seams.

The Nebari was saying something now, but Sikozu did not particularly care. She did look up when Chiana dragged Crichton from the room by the hand, off to who knew where. She did not want to know what they were going to do.

She shivered as a chill ran through the ship, a consequence of the failing the systems, but the laugh that sounded again behind her was colder. She had forgotten the Hynerian was still there. She turned slightly to glance at him.

"Something amusing?" she demanded.

"Yes," he said. "You're a lost little girl," he laughed. "And yet you're sitting there, completely dependent on us, telling yourself how much better you are. Does that not strike you as the least bit ironic?"

Sikozo turned away from him disgustedly. "An unfortunate circumstance, but it will not last long."

"They all say that at first," Rygel said. "We've all been meaning to get our lives back for years, but in the end, all we've ever had is each other. And you don't even have that."

"I am not like _you_," Sikozu said.

"You're right about that," Rygel said darkly. "You're just wrong that you're better." He flew away in an arrogant huff, and Sikozu decided he had some nerve giving anyone lessons in humility.

Sikozu sighed and looked back to her hand, severed completely only arns ago, it was finally starting to mend. She wished the rest of her life was as easy to fix.

Try as she might, she could not stop thinking about Crichton. Ridiculous, really, that such a strange creature was occupying so many of her thoughts. But she had underestimated him when they met, and she worried it would not be the last time. That spark of madness that had been in his eyes had almost entirely extinguished upon his reunion with his friends. His plan, though insane, had worked and they were all alive. The Grudeks all dead.

She heard the Pilot moan behind her and was pulled from her thoughts by a surge of pity. If things had went differently, she might have come here working for the Grudeks, she might have been a reason for causing pain to a creature that had more than enough already. She was almost glad they had betrayed her, because she was not sure if she would otherwise have had the fortitude to betray them.

And for all that this ship was dying, it was not dead yet. Crichton had saved it, when it would die anyway, at the risk of his and all of their lives--had stayed here for a creature's right to die in peace, when his friends had a transport they could have left in. Part of her wanted to admire that. The rest of her thought perhaps he still had more madness left in him than she realized.

There was something else in him, too, though. More than met the eye. It was disturbing that she could not figure out what it was, but those pieces of equations she had seen on the walls, she had understood just enough of them to realize they were not scribbles of a madman but something far more--something even her superior intellect could not quite grasp.

And he wrote them like he knew them all by heart.

She was very intrigued, but she did not miss the danger, and she knew she should get away as far and as fast as she could from these people, before they got her killed--or killed her.

She heard faint whistling, and a moment later, Crichton slid down beside her. She glanced at him briefly, rolling her eyes when he leaned close. Though, she had to wonder, if he had looked like this when they had met, would she have underestimated him so badly? She could not help thinking, with those blue eyes boring into her, that she was underestimating him still.

"All right, here's the thing. Now..." he paused, but she said nothing. He sounded much saner now, but he still had a strange way of getting to a point. He placed a thumb against his lips, then lightly touched her leg. "You might not want to come with us. We are not...the best traveling companions."

Did he truly believe she could not figure that out for herself? "I am going to get my life back," she snapped. "I will not...end up like _you_."

He arched his eyebrows and gave a slight nod. "O_kay_." He stood, and Sikozu returned her gaze to her feet.

He did not believe her, and she did not blame him. She did not believe it either.

_The End. _


End file.
